HC rejects anticipatory bail plea of Gugnani brothers

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of Gugnani brothers, promoters of Matrix Infosys, allegedly involved in collection of crores of rupees from a section of learning centers of Punjab Technical University (PTU) in an unauthorised manner.

The court, however, allowed anticipatory bail to Rama Gugnani, the co-accused, on the condition that she would cooperate with the investigators and provide the latter with the requisite documents. The court said that the police could again seek cancellation of Rama's bail, if she fails to cooperate during investigations.

The court had earlier granted interim bail to Ajesh Gugnani, his brother Sanjeev Gugnani and Rama Gugnani while directing the trio to join the investigations with the Kapurthala police. The accused complied with the court's orders and joined the police probe.

Two employees of Matrix Infosys were arrested by the police during nationwide raids at several locations last year. They were later released on bail after remaining in judicial custody for more than two months. Meanwhile, the regional centre allotted to Matrix Infosys was also terminated by the authorities after reportedly adopting the due procedure.

Earlier, PTU registrar HS Bains had lodged a complaint with the Kapurthala police, which registered a case under Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery of valuably security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) against the accused on October 23 last year.

Bains had alleged that the university had received complaints from six learning centers under the distance education programme (DEP) about collection of fee by Matrix Infosys, over and above the prescribed fee.

“The promoters have committed fraud on students and parents by making false promises with them. They collected certain fees from the students on behalf of the university and pocketed the same, thus, committing fraud,” Bains alleged.

On October 20, 2012, a police team visited the six learning centres, which informed the university about such alleged malpractices of Matrix Infosys promoters.

“Since the high court has summoned them to face contempt of court petition on October 31, the two got an FIR registered against me by levelling false allegations of collecting money from the learning centers even as all my actions are based on the provisions of the MoU. Kapurthala Police too acted in haste since it was beyond their territorial jurisdiction to register an FIR,” he had added.